CD-Rom not showing up in Bios, but works in Windows?

For some reason my EL80 isnt showing the cdrom in bios, and I cant boot from it, yet it shows up just fine in windows. And on top of that, I'm running xp-64bit, so none of the windows bios update programs work. Any ideas?

 

Maste/Slave Issue most likely. Did you buy a new ODD, or flash any firmwares lately ?

 

Nope. And that was my first thought too, which I quickly ruled out.

 

Do you have a SATA HDD ?
And is the ODD in Master or Slave Mode ?

 

Let me put it this way then... First, the laptop is an EL80 which is a sata laptop.

Second, the odd showed up in bios before this, and there havent been any hardware or bios changes before now. Now, I try and boot from odd but the bios does not see a odd attached to the machine, but inside windows the odd works just fine.

 

Try re-connecting it.

And uninstall the ODD, and its ATA Channel in Device Manager.
(Create a Restore Point before doing this, which will revert all changes made if anything goes wrong)

Also, check for a BIOS update for your notebook.

If you can get the latest firmware from the ODD manufacturer's site, try re-flashing the firmware if ^^ don't work.

 

Lol, I've already tried that. And flashing the bios is the whole reason I'm asking about this! Lol. Without Bios level CDrom support, I cant flash because for some stupid reason compal didnt put in a bios level flashing program, and I only have windows 64 bit to use and the brilliant programmers at compal decided that 64 bit isnt mainstream enough (Aside from almost every single enthusiust and high memory users that use 64-bit to use 4 full gigs of ram and a faster instruction set for 64-bit enabled programs)

 

Have you tried connecting another similar ODD module and see if that shows up in the BIOS ?

Tried connecting this ODD module into other notebooks, and see if it shows up in their BIOS ?

Have you tried connecting it externally via USB, and see if the USB ODD is detectable in the BIOS ?

Windows XP 64 won't have anything to do with this. The fault is at the BIOS or H/W level. Can you not flash using a USB Flash-Disk ?

Have you checked for an updated firmware ? Try running this infotool, and see if it gives correct or messed up info regarding the ODD module.

 

I really dont have a similar drive.

I also dont have another notebook. $$$

And I dont have a USB drive either.

Compal doesnt make their windows based flash program compatable with 64-bit OS's (So no, not xp 64's fault, but Compal's) And for some reason the HEL80 model doesnt have a bios level flash upgrade (I'm guessing it's more than just the el80).

I have checked for an updated firmware for the ood, but no go there. This tool seems to be reporting back the correct info.